1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus for processing an image showing a living body, a microscope system, an endoscope system, and an image processing method.
2. Related Art
Upon detection of an abnormality and the like of an organ of a living body, an observation method and a staining method are conventionally selected and used in accordance with an observation target and an observation purpose. For example, in a case of organs having a glandular structure, such as the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and prostate gland, an observation method is used in which a pathological specimen taken from a living body is stained to make microscopic observations, or an endoscope is inserted into the living body to make observations with irradiation of white light.
As an example, when an abnormality (lesion) is detected from a pathological specimen, non-fluorescent staining such as hematoxylin and eosin staining (hereinafter referred to as “HE staining”) that uses two dyes of hematoxylin and eosin, or Papanicolaou stain (Pap stain) is performed first as morphological observation staining to observe the forms of tissues and cells. Bright-field observation with transmitted-light illumination is performed by an optical microscope.
Moreover, the lack of information in morphological diagnosis based on morphology information may be complemented, or staining called special staining or immunostaining for judging suitability of the administration of a drug may be performed. For example, when a molecular pathological examination for diagnosing a functional abnormality such as the abnormal expression of a molecular target (a specific gene or protein) is performed, the molecular target is fluorescence-labeled (stained) to perform fluorescence observation with epi-illumination, or is enzyme-labeled to perform bright-field observation, by an immunohistochemistry (IHC) method, an immunocytochemistry (ICC) method, an in situ hybridization (ISH) method, or the like.
In addition, various techniques are known which automatically extract an area corresponding to a diagnosis target from an image obtained by capturing a stained specimen, by image processing (see, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-208339).
Moreover, Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2003-533674 discloses methods in detecting abnormal cells and tissues based upon measurement of tryptophan-associated autofluorescence (intrinsic fluorescence).